The advent of “software defined radios” (hereinafter “SDRs”) promises a substantial increase in the communication capabilities of moveable computing devices. Some examples of SDRs are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,091,765 issued to A. W. Peitzold, III, et al. on Jul. 18, 2000 and entitled “Reconfigurable Radio System Architecture;” U.S. Pat. No. 6,052,600 issued to B. A. Fette et al. on Apr. 18, 2000 and entitled “Software Programmable Radio and Method for Configuring;” and U.S. Patent Application No. 20030050055 filed in the name of P. Ting et al. on Mar. 13, 2003 and entitled “Software Defined Radio (SDR) Architecture for Wireless Digital Communication Systems;” the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference herein.
The communication technologies and protocols that an SDR uses can be adjusted “on-the-fly” via software controls. Because of this capability, SDR-enabled devices gain tremendous resiliency in establishing and maintaining communications in a diverse communications environment as compared to devices that use fixed radios, e.g., a cellphone designed to operate only on a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) network. Even if multi-band cellular devices are considered, SDR-enabled devices offer considerable advantages in that they use a single programmable radio interface, rather than multiple radio interfaces, each one designed to operate over a single cellular network. This enables devices to have a small form factor and exploit substantial economies of scale.
A challenging problem regarding SDRs and, more generally, devices whose mode of operation (e.g., as defined by the communications protocols currently used by an SDR) can be affected dynamically via computer operations is to decide when and how the mode of operation should be altered in order to achieve a desired goal, for instance, maximizing the utility of the SDR, minimizing the cost of operation, minimizing the power consumption or other goal. The aforementioned computer operations are typically software-written procedures executed on a computer microchip. Another problem pertains to making available to the device the appropriate set of computer operations by the time that they will be needed to effect a change in its mode of operation.
U.K. Patent Application No. 2,350,749 filed in the name of P. McAndrew et al. on Jun. 1, 1999 and entitled “Transferring Configuration Data to a Software Defined Radio Apparatus,” the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein, discloses how configuration parameters or software for an SDR-enabled device can be physically transferred conveniently to the device via use of a “cradle.” Further, U.S. Patent Application No. 20020082044 filed in the name of D. V. Davenport on Jun. 27, 2002 and entitled “Wireless Communication with a Mobile Asset Employing Dynamic Configuration of a Software Defined Radio,” the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein, discloses the use of a location discovery technique to identify the location of a mobile asset, e.g., a truck, equipped with an SDR-enabled device and then to configure the SDR based on the radio technologies used in that location.
However, existing SDRs focus on the actual process of configuring the radio interface or retrieving from, for example, a server, the configuration parameters needed for the configuration.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,243,755 issued to Tagaki et al. on Jun. 5, 2001 and entitled “Information Processing System Using Information Caching Based on User Activity,” the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein, discloses a system where the user using a personal device retrieves user-oriented application level content from a remote server(s), e.g., e-mail documents. However, Tagaki et al. is concerned exclusively with the act of transferring of information from one device to another. As this information is targeting the (human) user of the recipient device, Tagaki et al. does not consider the case in which this information may affect the operation of the target device itself.
Thus, a need exists for techniques for preconditioning mobile devices using anticipated context parameters pertinent to future operational conditions for the device.